So, a couple of weeks ago when I was away from home someone spilled a class of rum and coke all over me. I changed immediately, rolled up the wet and sticky clothes, and put them in my suitcase. A week or so later, when I got home, I washed them in the machine only to find when I got them out that they were covered in little spots of mould. Cursing myself for not rinsing them earlier, I tried soaking them in cold water and washing powder. I ended up leaving them a week (I’m not very organised when it comes to doing laundry), to no avail. As they are all white, I’ve now tried soaking them in a bleach solution, but if this doesn’t work does anyone have any ideas?
One of the items is 100% cotton, the other two are a cotton/polyester mix, I think, if that makes any difference.
Anybody? The bleach didn’t work, by the way, as I suspected. My next attempt will be to try a stain remover such as Vanish, does anyone have any particular recommendations?
In my experience as a housewife and mom, mold and mildew on clothes make stains that are just never going to come out completely, and you might as well resign yourself to relegating the garments in question to “old clothes” status, especially if the bleach didn’t work. You can still wear them to paint the house or dig in the garden. Sorry.
If they’re something that you really treasure, I’d take them to a professional cleaners, see what they can do. Bleach is the first line of defense, and if bleach doesn’t work, then you need to ramp it up to the level of serious “do not try this at home” industrial chemicals.
Damn, that’s what my mum said, too :). They’re hardly irreplaceable or expensive items, but the trousers are only a year old and it would have been nice not to have to fork out £30-40 for another pair. However, it looks like I’ll just have to mix my metaphors and bite the bullet, chalking this one up to experience. It’s particularly annoying as I’m normally quite good at putting stained items to soak. Ah well.
I infer from your second paragraph that it’s not worth buying some stain remover to try, since I would never use it for anything else.
I had a band uniform that was coated in mold. It had rained the day I wore it, then sat in my car for 2 weeks. I took it to a dry-cleaner and they got it all out. Don’t know how well cotton would fare with that, though.
I suspect that that was a different kind of mould, too. This is a lot of tiny black spots, mostly with pink patches around the outside of them. I imagine they are embedded in the material.
Where do I get me some borax? I’m pretty sure there’s none in my larder at present :). Do you have experience of this method working for mould? I’ll give it a try anyway, if I can; there’s nothing to lose as the clothes are pretty much unwearable at present, anyway.